Our most popular free theme releases of the past have been Brian Gardner designed themes (yes, the Brian Gardner of Revolution fame). So all WordPress theme connoisseurs will be glad to know that this month we’re releasing Brian’s latest theme, Nitrous.

Besides it’s ultra-clean look, perhaps the coolest feature of Nitrous is the way it can auto-generate drop-down navigational menus using your WordPress pages and sub-pages. This allows you to give your readers lots of navigational options, without cluttering up the nav bar.

Nitrous comes with a built-in header image, but this can easily be swapped out to fit the theme of your blog.

The word “Nitrous” has a motorsport connotation to it, given the use of Nitrous Oxide (or N20) in increasing the power output of engines, and hence giving that all-important boost in acceleration and speed in times of need. This is the concept behind the Nitrous Theme for WordPress. Nitrous is a fast-loading theme that gives you straight-cut, no-nonsense presentation. The design loads fast, with use of lightweight images. The grey and blue color scheme also contribute to that European touring car feel. I can almost feel the wind in my hair!

One interesting feature of Nitrous is that nested pages are automatically added to the top navigation bar as nested dropdown menus. This way you have easy access to your static pages–including the nested ones or the “subpages”–without cluttering up the navigation area with text.

Nitrous is yet another collaboration between Performancingand Brian Gardner, released as a free monthly theme by Performancing Themes.